HALCYON
by beingxwest
Summary: Belle changes everything, and the first person to notice it is also the teapot who notices everything.


**This is my first work for this fandom, so please let me know what you think!**

 ** _/_**

 ** _HALCYON -a mythical bird that calmed the waves in winter_**

Mrs. Potts likes the girl.

Her name is Belle. She is as pretty as her name dictates that she should be, but she has a heart of gold. She loves to read-when the prince took her to the library, according to him, her eyes were nearly as wide as saucers as she took in her surroundings.

She is the only the girl that Mrs. Potts has ever seen stand up to the prince. She tells him off when he's rude to her. Doesn't let him off the hook without a proper apology. To the surprise of everyone in the house, with the exception of Lumiere and Mrs. Potts herself, the prince apologizes to her. Without loosing his temper.

Then they dance in the ballroom. Belle wears a real ballgown that is as gold as the fixings in the ballroom, as gold as her heart, and the prince cleans himself up too.

Mrs. Potts has hope for the first time in a long time, and she wonders why she ever let herself doubt fate. Doubt the boy that she half-raised when his own parents weren't much good for that.

Lumiere looks up at her and smiles as they watch them dance. "I think we did good," he whispers.

Her reply is quiet, her attention on the couple-girl and beast, turning and half-leaping across the dance floor, looking like they've never been happier, looking like they could not possibly belong anywhere else-even as she speaks. They are a sight. "We did very good."

For the moment, she means it. What the coming weeks will bring, she doesn't know, but she wants to mean it.

(Can you mean something for a split second? Can you mean something if you don't know what will happen next?)

Belle's dress catches light from the chandelier that hangs in the center of the room. It reflects onto the walls. If you don't look too hard, and the light catches just right, it looks like falling stars.

(This only happens when the prince picks her up and twirls her, but he notices, so he does it again.)

Belle laughs. It is a loud, musical sound, floating just above the crescendo of the song that they're dancing to. The prince smiles in return. It is all teeth, but it is not monster-like, not frightening.

They both look so happy.

As much as it was about the prince learning to love, Mrs. Potts knows, it was also about them-about the people that should've done more, that needed to have been there for the prince in his youth. They had failed him miserably as a child, and very few of the older members of the palace staff (who'd been there, who'd known, who'd seen the opportunities to help and let them go right by) even bothered to complain about their sentence. Being turned into antiques and knowing that, one day soon, they would lose their sentience and die... Many of them, Mrs. Potts included, had felt that that was fair. For the longest time, she'd been prepared to accept that fate if the prince never managed to break the curse.

(She knows that she would regret her son having to pay that price. It wasn't his burden to bear. But she supposed that failing children was simply something that they could not avoid in their palace. There was nothing she could do about it anyway.)

And yet, Mrs. Potts does not think that the curse would ever have allowed the prince to break it himself.

All their fates depend on this girl, who has so clearly run off with their prince's heart. All of them need them to love each other just a little bit faster.

He spins her again, and Mrs. Potts realizes that that's why she was laughing.

Real love could not be rushed.

Behind her, Cogsworth, who knows this better than anyone, sighs. It is hidden in the final notes of the melody, so no one notices. If Mrs. Potts still had hands, she would rest one on his shoulder then. But she doesn't, so she can't, and so she pretends not to notice.

This is what got them into trouble with the prince, Mrs. Potts reminds herself, even as she continues to stare straight ahead. Maybe they all deserve it, if they are so content to let their friends waste away around them.

Belle laughs again. Chip giggles at the same time, and Mrs. Potts refocuses her gaze on the couple to see that Belle has slipped and the prince is pulling her back to her feet. One of his arms is wrapped around the small of her back-he caught her before she fell.

So not all of them deserve it.

/

When Mrs. Potts finds out that the prince has sent Belle back to her father, who is ill and needs her, she wants to be angry.

She wants to be angry for her son, who will never again play in the sun. For the maestro and his wife, who will never be able to embrace each other again.

But the prince has learned what love means-sacrifice, letting go when necessary. It is not pleasant, because it can't be, and it often does more breaking than saving. It is clear that he knows this. She can see it in the way his shoulders hang. The shine in his eyes.

She cannot be angry. It is against everything she believes, against everything that the motherly and kind Mrs. Potts is known for, and she cannot be angry with him for his choice.

"You did the right thing, dear," she tells him. "We don't always have a choice."

The prince had a choice, but her words will soothe his disappointment. The ramifications of his choice are not lost on him-he knows good and well that he has sealed all of their fates, that it is far too late, and the curse will have it's way with their palace once again.

"You aren't angry with me?"

His loud booming voice still somehow sounds tiny to her. She wonders if he will ever stop being a child in her eyes, lost and needing to be shielded from the horrors of the life that surrounded them when his father was king.

She wants to shake her head, but she's a teapot, so that is not an option. She settles for rolling the tea cart forward and giving him her best smile. "Not one of us is angry. You did the right thing." She pauses, but she knows he needs to hear what she's been telling herself for the last three decades. "Love is not always easy. It isn't supposed to be. And sometimes, it's not something you can win at-you have to do whatever you think is best, not just for yourself, but for the people that you love, and there's absolutely no way out but through."

She wonders if he hears what she means beneath all of that. _We were afraid of your father, afraid to tell you the truth, and we picked ourselves over you._

"I should've picked all of us, all of..." The prince gulps. "All of you. Who have stayed with me so long."

Maybe he doesn't understand why they are just as guilty of that, but he knows the feeling, and Mrs. Potts doesn't have the energy to tell him why he shouldn't worry about it. _Because, a lifetime ago, we made that choice, too. And you paid the price._

But there is something else that she can tell him. She sighs. "We all love many people, your highness. And when we are forced to choose, whoever is left on either side has no right to make you feel miserable for your choice."

Behind her, in the glass case where it sits, the rose seems to sigh. It's almost like it's yawning. (It was probably two of the last petals rubbing against each other, but Mrs. Potts only heard the sound, and her mind automatically went for the ironic explanation.)

"I'm sorry." The prince lets out a heaving breath. "For all of this."

Mrs. Potts wants to shake her head. "No, my dear. I'm afraid that the blame belongs to us."

He turns to face her. For a moment, recognition flashes in his eyes, but then its gone.

Maybe it's better if he doesn't understand.

/

Belle comes back.

Mrs. Potts doesn't see what happened up there, where the prince supposedly died and then was brought back by the same enchantress that had cursed them all. It must be true, because Mrs. Potts remembers frantically calling for her son before the whole world went black. When she woke up, it was sunny outside, and it was warm, like it hadn't been in so many, many years.

The palace has put itself back together, somehow. Where it had fallen into disrepair, without anyone to care for the grounds or the gate or the places where the ceiling gave under the last heavy rainy season, it is good as new.

And all of them are human again.

Those of them who had family in the village are crying, including Mrs. Potts-her husband is there, and "Chip, this is your father," she says, and her- _their_ -son is throwing himself into his father's arms.

Including the prince, who appears with Belle at his side, twin smiles on both their faces.

"Well, I suppose we've done good, Mrs. Potts," Lumiere laughs, suddenly at her side, Plumette in his arms.

Mrs. Potts looks around, sees her husband holding onto their son, and Belle and the prince twirling each other around and smiling at whoever went to speak with them. Beside her, Lumiere and Plumette and Cogsworth look so happy-she could burst with how happy she is, how right the world suddenly looks, standing out in the morning sun.

Behind her, Belle says something (Mrs. Potts isn't sure what, with all the people talking), and the prince laughs so hard that there's no mistaking it. (She hasn't heard that sound in so long.)

"Yes, Lumiere, I suppose that we have done good."

She means it this time.


End file.
